Earl Grey Banana Bread
| February 27, 2012 | Filled under Breads, Breakfast, Cake and Pastry, Desserts, Fruit |
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One of the downsides to trying to balance keeping up with recipe development jobs and making sure I have fresh content to post here is that I rarely have time to make recipes created by other people. (I’m not complaining – I love what I do and can’t get over the fact that big companies are actually willing pay me to play in the kitchen!)
Then I heard about the Secret Recipe Club, which pairs up bloggers each month and has them make, test, and write about another blogger’s recipe – meaning not only that I’d get to make something created by someone else, but I’d also get feedback on my recipes. Win-Win, right? Unfortunately, a lot of people agreed that it was a great concept – I’ve been on the waiting list for months. But I finally made it into a group, and I couldn’t be more excited!
For my first month participating in SRC, I was assigned to The More Than Occasional Baker. I considered making something sinfully decadent like Peanut Butter Toblerone Cheesecake (!!!) but ultimately settled on the Earl Grey Banana Bread. What can I say? I’ve been searching for a better banana bread recipe, and I adore Earl Grey.
This recipe is definitely a keeper! It’s light and fluffy, but also super moist – it’s totally not the kind of banana bread that requires a smear of butter to make it edible. The tea flavor is subtle, but it adds a really interesting layer of flavor that I loved. Same for the brown sugar, which adds slight caramel notes, and the turbinado sugar on top, which gives the crust a sticky toffee-like crunch.
All in all, this is a great bread to either grab for a quick breakfast or to enjoy mid-afternoon with a mug of tea.
Earl Grey Banana Bread
Yields 16 servings
Prep Time: 10 minutes; Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
If you like your bread to have a delicate, uniform crumb, you use a food processor or egg beaters to process the banana into a smooth puree. I prefer to mash my bananas with a fork, leaving them slightly chunky – you’ll end up with small pockets of intense banana flavor throughout the bread.
Adapted from The More than Occasional Baker
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup Water
- 5 bags of Earl Grey tea
- 1/4 cup packed Dark Brown Sugar
- 3/4 cup Sugar
- 1/2 cup Butter
- 1 cup fat free Sour Cream
- 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
- 2 Eggs, lightly beaten
- 2-1/4 cups all purpose Flour
- 3 very ripe Bananas, mashed
- 2 tablespoons Turbinado Sugar (Sugar in the Raw)
Preparation
- Preheat the oven to 350*F.
- Bring the water to a boil in a small saucepan. Remove from heat and add the tea bags. Allow the tea to steep for 5 minutes, then discard the tea bags. Add the sugars and butter and return the pan to the heat. Cook until the butter and sugars have melted into a thick syrup, about 2 minutes. Let cool.
- Combine the sour cream and baking soda in a large bowl. Let stand for 5 minutes. Stir in the cooled tea syrup and the eggs. Sift in the flour and fold gently to combine. Fold in the mashed bananas.
- Pour the batter into two greased loaf pans. Sprinkle the tops with turbinado sugar.
- Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before slicing.
Check out some of the other posts from SRC members after the jump!
Oh my! I love the idea of tea in banana bread – I bet this was so tasty
I love this twist! I have made two of my mom’s banana bread recipes: Banana Honey Bran Bread and her Banana Chocolate Chip bread. We can’t get enough. I am pinning this to make also!
Never thought of adding tea to banana bread…looks great!
Oh wow, I am in love! My two favorite things combined into one delicious loaf! Your photos are great, too!
This sounds good. I have steeped Earl Grey in butter to make madelines (so good…) – so I am sure it has a wonderful impact on the bread.
Welcome to the SRC and I love your inaugural recipe choice, I’ve never thought of adding tea to banana bread but it sounds amazing.
If you haven’t already, I’d love for you to check out my Group ‘A’ SRC entry: Crunchy Fudgy Heart Bites and my Group ‘D’ entry: Health(ier) Peanut Brittle
Lisa~~
Cook Lisa Cook
oh my lord. I love Earl Grey tea flavored stuff!! I’m SOOO making this!!
Tea has become quite the food trend recently, with green tea noodles, etc. I’m sure the Earl Grey offsets the sweet banana bread wonderfully.
So glad you chose to make this. It’s really delicious, perfect with a cup of tea! Your banana bread looks amazing!!
SRC is SO much fun!! Your first recipe looks fabulous. The banana bread looks just perfectly cooked
Wow, what an amazing bunch of recipes this month!I love cooking with tea whenever I get the chance.
This is the second recipe I’ve seen in this month’s src that used tea. Pretty interesting. Your banana bread looks delicious.
my coworker loves Earl Grey tea. I should make this for her to have with our 3 o’clock tea.
I meant to comment the very day you published, to welcome to the SRC club (I’ve been a member for 4 months only and LOVE IT!)
you picked a winner of a recipe – I am always searching for ways to incorporate tea in recipes, even bought a book recently on the subject (called Culinary Tea, in case you are interested, and NO, I don’t work for the publisher!
Welcome to SRC, look forward to your next post on it!
[...] Earl Grey Banana Bread | Healthy. Delicious. Adapted from The More than Occasional Baker Ingredients If you like your bread to have a delicate, uniform crumb, you use a food processor or egg beaters to process the banana into a smooth puree. [...]
Tea in banana bread sounds so intriguing & I’m currently banana-bread-obsessed so this is another one to bookmark and revisit later.
And a question – any idea what the sugar content is out of the 32 grams carbs? I have to watch both carbs & sugars so it would be great if I could know whether this is something I can not just bake for the family but also enjoy myself. Thanks in advance!
16.2 grams if you skip the sugar on top; 17.3 grams with the sugar on top.
Thanks for letting me know!
My comfort food for breakfast!
When I read this recipe, I immediately thought of chia tea! I bet using chai instead of earl grey adds an amazing spicy dimension. Add a few extra spices…yum! You should come up with a recipe for chai tea banana bread and share it on your site!